Do you love Amazon?  It is hard to believe that there is one website where you could literally scroll and find anything and everything you want.  Half the time, you can find items to buy that you did not even know you need, until low and behold your eyes see it!   The dangers of scrolling can hit the pocketbook.  We like to look at how the city spends our tax dollars, and it is kind of like Amazon. They spend money like they are shopping on Amazon, adding items to the cart and when they are bored they just look for something that tickles their fancy.

Imagine our surprise when scrolling through the city agendas, we found another interesting item from the July 2^nd City Council Meeting related to purchasing authority.  Daniel Ford, Director of Administrative Services sent a memo to the Mayor, Members of the Frisco City Council, and cc’d in Wes Pierson – City Manager and E.A. Hoppe – Assistant City Manager asking them to consider a change to the ordinance granting purchasing authority to the City Manager or his/her designee for all budgeted items not exceeding $100,000.

In 2017, the City Council approved a threshold increase from $25,000 to $50,000.  Why are they now wanting to change it to $100,000?   The memo states the request is being made to streamline the contract approval process, expedite routine non-controversial purchases, and to reduce the administrative burden on staff, while maintaining compliance and transparency.    The word transparency made us laugh!

The memo goes on to read that in 2018 the purchasing of items on the consent agenda was 117 for the full year.  Now they claim it has gone up to 245 for the full year and this change would reduce the administrative and processing time for putting council items together by almost two weeks.  It also states the increase would allow more flexibility and efficiency to handle these agreements.  HOW DOES MAINTAINING TRANSPARENCY AND FLEXIBILITY GO TOGETHER?  

Would you be surprised to learn that Agenda Item #30 passed and was APPROVED 6 – 0.  The new ORDINANCE 2024-07-32 basically allows the city to spend more with less oversight.  How is that transparent?  Who determines what is a ROUTINE AND NON-CONTROVERSIAL purchase?  Oh yeah, the city determines that that!  If one of the council members knocked on your door and said I need 100,000, don’t ask questions, just trust me, would you? The staff is asking to reduce the administrative burden they face so they want to be paid the same but have their workload made easier or do less work. 

Does anyone besides us see an issue with this Ordinance?  Interesting how they threw it on the agenda before the Summer Vacation break, don’t you think?  Why does the city always claim they are taking steps to be more TRANSPARENT, yet they send almost every single PIR to the Attorney General and hide information from the public?  If you think this is a bad change then you should email your city council and city manager. Now they claim in this memo they want to spend more with less oversight to be more transparent.